UK Space Conference part 9
Part 1: http://cesy.livejournal.com/173972.html
The eleventh talk I went to was the big one at the end.
The first bit was by Jerry Bolter of EADS Astrium. He talked about the BepiColombo mission to Mercury. It's easier to get to Pluto than to Mercury. Only 40% of the surface has been mapped. The mission will test some bits of Einstein's theory of General Relativity. The Messenger mission to Mercury was launched in August 2004, and will reach orbit around Mercury in March 2011. BepiColombo will be launched in 2013 on a Soyuz Frégat. It will have 2 orbiters - a Japanese MMO to map the magnetosphere and the ESA MPO to study the planet more closely. The bits of the orbit are called periherm and apiherm instead of perigee and apogee. MPO has 13 instruments. MMO is spin stabilised with 26 revolutions/minute. The route will start with going into Earth orbit, raising the apogee gradually to the Moon, then a gravity assist from the moon. It orbits the Sun 12 times before getting to Mercury. The transfer time is 6 years. There are major issues with heating - heat shield on one side so the spacecraft doesn't overheat. MMO has to be kept in the shade.
The second bit was by David Southwood of ESA. He says he's a physicist but he doesn't like pure research. He attempted to justify his job. As Director of Science, he says he likes science. He mentioned missions currently flying: Hubble, Integral, XMM-Newton, Rosetta. He compared them to their American equivalents: Chandra just does images, whereas Newton does spectroscopy, which is better. Deep Impact is much more violent than Rosetta. He made a bad joke about Mme Sarkozy. Other missions flying now are SOHO, Cluster and Ulysses. He made a bad joke about Reagan. Ulysses communicates through NASA's Deep Space Network. He was at uni at Imperial. Mars Express was launched in 1996. Something to do with it failed, but it's still on his "flying now" list. Cassini-Huygens is still flying, and has been extended to 2017. Double Star is still flying. He's a bit keen on bad jokes that he appears to think are cutting, sarcastic and funny. Other things flying now: Venus Express, Akari, Hinode, Cordt. He blames politics for the delays on ExoMars. Lots of LISA bits are being built in Stevenage. He's proud of lots of things. Dave thinks he looks like Einstein.
The third bit was by Martin Sweeting, who is made of awesome. He is the founder of Surrey Satellite, and is local. (As in, he lives down the same road as my friend Kim. How cool is that?) He uses screen beans, insects, turtles and dinosaurs to illustrate that small is good. Small satellites are small in mass, time, cost and utility. You get more computing power than many big satellites do. They had £30 million revenues in 2007. He accidentally said something was "rather unique", but he pronounced "router" correctly, so we forgave him. SSTL specialise in 6 to 600kg, less than 2 years development, between £5 million and £25 million. They started launching in 1981. They have a 93% mission success. They've used 9 different launchers, including Delta, Ariane, TSkylon, Zenit, Dnepr, Atlas, Athena and some old converted Russian nuclear missiles. This is quite useful when the Russians need to decommission an old nuclear weapon - they take the warhead and then SSTL can use the launcher to launch a satellite. Their ground station looks after 14 satellites, but they're mostly autonomous - the computer just texts someone if there's a problem. They test how various COTS devices work in LEO. Previous satellites took 2 weeks to image a particular area. DMC takes 1 day. This is awesome.
Next part: http://cesy.livejournal.com/176569.html
The eleventh talk I went to was the big one at the end.
The first bit was by Jerry Bolter of EADS Astrium. He talked about the BepiColombo mission to Mercury. It's easier to get to Pluto than to Mercury. Only 40% of the surface has been mapped. The mission will test some bits of Einstein's theory of General Relativity. The Messenger mission to Mercury was launched in August 2004, and will reach orbit around Mercury in March 2011. BepiColombo will be launched in 2013 on a Soyuz Frégat. It will have 2 orbiters - a Japanese MMO to map the magnetosphere and the ESA MPO to study the planet more closely. The bits of the orbit are called periherm and apiherm instead of perigee and apogee. MPO has 13 instruments. MMO is spin stabilised with 26 revolutions/minute. The route will start with going into Earth orbit, raising the apogee gradually to the Moon, then a gravity assist from the moon. It orbits the Sun 12 times before getting to Mercury. The transfer time is 6 years. There are major issues with heating - heat shield on one side so the spacecraft doesn't overheat. MMO has to be kept in the shade.
The second bit was by David Southwood of ESA. He says he's a physicist but he doesn't like pure research. He attempted to justify his job. As Director of Science, he says he likes science. He mentioned missions currently flying: Hubble, Integral, XMM-Newton, Rosetta. He compared them to their American equivalents: Chandra just does images, whereas Newton does spectroscopy, which is better. Deep Impact is much more violent than Rosetta. He made a bad joke about Mme Sarkozy. Other missions flying now are SOHO, Cluster and Ulysses. He made a bad joke about Reagan. Ulysses communicates through NASA's Deep Space Network. He was at uni at Imperial. Mars Express was launched in 1996. Something to do with it failed, but it's still on his "flying now" list. Cassini-Huygens is still flying, and has been extended to 2017. Double Star is still flying. He's a bit keen on bad jokes that he appears to think are cutting, sarcastic and funny. Other things flying now: Venus Express, Akari, Hinode, Cordt. He blames politics for the delays on ExoMars. Lots of LISA bits are being built in Stevenage. He's proud of lots of things. Dave thinks he looks like Einstein.
The third bit was by Martin Sweeting, who is made of awesome. He is the founder of Surrey Satellite, and is local. (As in, he lives down the same road as my friend Kim. How cool is that?) He uses screen beans, insects, turtles and dinosaurs to illustrate that small is good. Small satellites are small in mass, time, cost and utility. You get more computing power than many big satellites do. They had £30 million revenues in 2007. He accidentally said something was "rather unique", but he pronounced "router" correctly, so we forgave him. SSTL specialise in 6 to 600kg, less than 2 years development, between £5 million and £25 million. They started launching in 1981. They have a 93% mission success. They've used 9 different launchers, including Delta, Ariane, TSkylon, Zenit, Dnepr, Atlas, Athena and some old converted Russian nuclear missiles. This is quite useful when the Russians need to decommission an old nuclear weapon - they take the warhead and then SSTL can use the launcher to launch a satellite. Their ground station looks after 14 satellites, but they're mostly autonomous - the computer just texts someone if there's a problem. They test how various COTS devices work in LEO. Previous satellites took 2 weeks to image a particular area. DMC takes 1 day. This is awesome.
Next part: http://cesy.livejournal.com/176569.html